Lena Edlund is an Associate Professor of Economics at Columbia University. Her research centers on the economics of gender and family, incorporating insights from evolutionary biology, anthropology, and sociology. Edlund’s past work has examined topics such as son preference, sex-selective abortion, dowry determination, and the impact of marriage and partner market conditions on sex allocation. She has also explored why industrialized cities tend to have higher proportions of females and the allocation of resources within families. Currently, Edlund’s research is on long-term determinants of women’s status as manifested by the allocation of rights in the family and the role of the rise of states, viz. state power.
Edlund earned her B.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from the Stockholm School of Economics, completing her doctorate in 1996.